Isn’t it a shame that so many software development managers don’t code anymore?

Since I am in a malicious mood today, I claim that they didn’t even write much code when they were still developers. But does it always have to be like this?

After years of deep contemplation I’ve come up with this rule:

Managers, regardless of their position in a hierarchy, should spend at least one-third of their time doing the work of their immediate subordinates.

Not only would this mean that every manager is productive and actively contributes to a project; it would also mean that managers stay current from a technological point of view. Especially the latter would ensure that their strategic decisions are based on much firmer ground.

Wouldn’t performance appraisals (and promotions) suddenly become more objective and fair? Wouldn’t it be much easier for managers to hire new people since they would know — from first-hand experience — what exactly to look for?

If this recursive rule were applied, even the software manager’s boss would write small parts of the software himself. His boss, in turn, would probably not code that much but maybe do some code-reviews or check the nightly build for compiler warnings.

Wouldn’t the code quality be much higher if developers knew that someone way up the corporate ladder scrutinizes their work and gave feedback? Wouldn’t everyone feel much better because they knew that their bosses really cared for what they do?

This is a rule for building up a hierarchy of software craftsmen, a rule that yields what I call a “Solid Software Company”: A company were everyone is a developer (at least to some extent), where everyone understands software’s true nature and developer’s needs.

Imagine you could travel back in time, to the early days of a once hip, now bureaucratic, politics-laden, inefficient, dreadful-to-work-for monster of a software company. You will arrive at a point at which they suddenly start to promote or hire people to be “just managers”.

So, viewed from a different, more negative angle, my rule can be rephrased like this:

The long and slow demise of a young, aspiring software company begins when its software development managers cease to write code.